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Foul Brood or other problems in hive - with pictures

This hive was kept on some property in the mountains of North-East Utah this summer. Due to the extreme drought and lack of nectar flow the hive became very week (others in the same area had the same problems). I brought the hive back to my urban backyard where my other 4 hives have been doing great.

The hive has been doing well, numbers have increased slightly but to be safe I was going to OFF the queen and combine the hive with one of my stronger hives.

HOWEVER, I noticed a few strange things in the hive, such as uncapped brood and halfway uncapped brood...which I've read is a sign up Foul Brood. I've also noticed a lot of the cappings are sunken in. I did do a roping test on a few of the brood, but I couldn't get any of it to rope.

Here are some pictures, things aren't looking too good and I don't want to add this hive to another if there is a serious problem. I need someone who has more experience than me to tell me what's going on.

Re: Foul Brood or other problems in hive - with pictures

Possibly they cannot keep their little brood nest warm. I don't know if you have foulbrood. It is hard to tell without being there. If a toothpick twisted in the dead pupae doesn't string out, you don't. I would combine it now if the dead brood is not ropey.

Re: Foul Brood or other problems in hive - with pictures

"Here are some pictures, things aren't looking too good and I don't want to add this hive to another if there is a serious problem. I need someone who has more experience than me to tell me what's going on."

It does not look like AFB to me but I would have it tested.

Make sure you are not using any equipment you are using on this hive on the rest. If you do an inspection, inspect the questionable one last. Sterilise all the equipment after. AFB is serious.

Re: Foul Brood or other problems in hive - with pictures

If 3 frames of healthy brood with the corresponding nurse bees and everything that had some pollen and capped honey on them were added to that colony I wonder if that would fix it.
I had a couple weak brood patterns earlier in the season. I think that the numbers were too low from a swarm in one case and another from starting the bees off with a new queen that took a while to start laying. Adding the brood and bees which increased the numbers fixed it. I don't think I had a mite syndrome just low numbers.

Your queen seen in photo 2 is laying a bunch so I wonder if they need a fresh round of bees and brood to take care of things. I'm just guessing. Adding to it might be an option. Hopefully other forum members with more experience than me will comment on my thinking. I got rid of the troubled brood with more bees no treatment.

Question.. If bees have parasytic mite syndrome are they done for or could you treat them and snap them out of it? It seems like they will need more bees.

Re: Foul Brood or other problems in hive - with pictures

If no AFB is present in the combs then the best solution is to combine these bees into another colony, it is late in the season to start feeding a decimated hive like this. Splits are easy to make in the spring and drawn combs would give a new split a huge boost at that time, I absolutely agree with squarepeg, I would not want to rob valuable resources from another hive at this time.

Re: Foul Brood or other problems in hive - with pictures

Enlarge the pics and look closely at the bees. It looks to me like some have shriveled wings. I would guess it's a colony in distress from mite overload and associated DWV. You could reduce down to a nuc, treat, feed and see what happens.

You may want to do a mite count on your other colonies and evaluate their status.

Re: Foul Brood or other problems in hive - with pictures

Great input. My best guess would be starvation. For those of you that read the full post the hive was placed where there was nearly no nectar flow this year, due to high drought. I've kept constant feed on the hive and it seems to be doing MUCH better, however, it was 36 degrees this morning and there is no way this hive will survive the winter.

If I combine with one of my other hives, it's not going to be fully drawn out. Is it too much to leave three deep frames on a hive where one of them isn't full? This would obviously make more dead air space for the bees to heat.

I could combine the bees then condense it back down to two deeps, but that's a whole lot of work and stress for another hive this late in the year.

I doubt it's AFB as any roping tests I've done come out negative...I feel confident at this point combining it...just not sure what course of action to take this late in the year.